śrī karaṇī mātā cālīsā

A Hindi chalisa to Karni Mata, whom western Rajasthan takes for a form of the Great Goddess and who is also remembered as a woman with a village and a lifetime. The chalisa keeps both. She is the primal power and formless light spread through the three worlds; and she is at Dhaulagarh on her lion with Bhairav going before her as her herald, and the verses name the village of Suap, where she was born. What it asks for is the ordinary business of a family deity, the removal of trouble and the granting of what the mind wants, rather than liberation. Her best-known shrine at Deshnok, where the rats are fed and counted among her own, is not described here; the chalisa keeps to the goddess rather than to the practice.